Part 38 (1/2)

95.

”Are you okay, Perry?”

Perry nodded. Again, he had his hands against the fan, blowing its feeble attempt at heat on the dashboard of Jeff's car. They should stop and buy him gloves, Mira thought, before leaving Bad Axe. There was a stillness to the air that made the snow seem even colder and more enveloping than it ordinarily would-and of course there was so little heat coming out of the vents that it seemed pointless to be idling in the funeral home parking lot, letting the car ”warm up.” The car seemed only to grow colder as they sat in it, engine rumbling around them, interior lit up by the white electric Dientz Funeral Parlor sign, as if that pale light were lowering the temperature of everything it touched.

Still, Mira wasn't ready to drive, and Perry had yet to speak since he'd said good-bye to Mr. Dientz.

When he'd first come back from the Werners', he'd spoken so quickly, been so flushed and breathless, that he reminded Mira of the ranting ”preacher” who sometimes stood on a bench on campus and shouted at the students as they pa.s.sed. On every campus she'd ever studied or visited, there had been such a preacher. Always a cheap-looking suit, a good haircut, eyes so pale they seemed to be lacking irises. What this particular ranting man said usually made sense, sentence to sentence, but no sense at all when put together: Lightning was striking cell phone towers. The producers of television shows were trying to read our minds. People in gray coats were hard to see, and could sneak up on you.

Perry had seemed to be trying to hold back that same ranting pa.s.sion, bordering on mania, insanity, when he came back saying he'd seen Nicole.

He'd seen Nicole, he said.

He'd seen her teeth.

But there was also something about a cat, and Mrs. Werner's hair-how it was more beautiful than it used to be-and a Hammond organ and a game of Hide and Seek, and then he just quit talking altogether, and Mira knew she had to get him out of there. She'd said to Mr. Dientz, ”It's time for us to leave.”

It had been a day full of shock and awe, and Mira regretted the toll it had obviously taken on Perry-beginning with the horror of Lucas at the morgue, and then the discussion with the woman from the Chamber Music Society, and then the photographs on Mr. Dientz's computer.

It was no wonder it had ended with Perry seeing a dead girl in her parents' house.

Mira looked over at him and thought of the cliche ”you look like you've seen a ghost”-but didn't say it. She reached over and took one of the hands that was pressed to the heater and brought it to her cheek.

Poor dear, she was thinking, surprised by how cold the hand was to her touch.

96.

”Hey there, Perry. It's me.”

”Yeah, Nicole.”

”You alone?”

”Well, since you know my roommate's every move, and you know he went to try to score some weed in Ohio with Lucas, I suppose you know I am.”

There was a click then, and a hum.

The hum was nothing.

It was the very song of what nothing was, Perry thought, holding the receiver to his ear long enough that he was still holding it when she knocked on his door, and when he opened it, she said, ”Can I come in?” and he was breathing into her hair before saying yes, before he'd even taken a breath.

97.

Ellen Graham was wearing the same hot pink bathrobe she'd been wearing earlier that day-although she seemed to have tidied the house a little, perhaps because she'd had some warning this time that Sh.e.l.ly was on her way. The piles of catalogs and envelopes that had been lying on the stairs were now stacked in a few loose piles by the front door. The white cat was lying in a pale patch of porch light that was somehow s.h.i.+ning through a crack in the closed curtain. Eerily this cat looked a little like the kind of cat who would have avoided sunlight, anyway, in favor of this reflected winter light. Sh.e.l.ly felt a stab of longing, of grief, for Jeremy, poor Jeremy, who had so loved to bask in a pool of sunlight on the bed or on the kitchen floor.

”Sit down,” Ellen said, and motioned Sh.e.l.ly to the couch. ”I'm glad you came back. I thought about you all day. I wondered if you'd had any ideas since you left, since our talk. Ideas about my daughter, where-”

”Again,” Sh.e.l.ly said, shaking her head a little, ”I don't want to mislead you, Ellen. I have no proof of anything. But I have had some more thoughts.”

”You look terrible,” Ellen said. ”Has something happened?”

Not now, Sh.e.l.ly thought. She could not tell anyone, now, about Jeremy. That would have to wait. Instead, she said, ”After I left here I went home, got on Google, and then I found the boy, the one who was in the accident with Nicole Werner. I went to his apartment, and we talked. There was a professor there, and another student who also knew Nicole. They're-”

Sh.e.l.ly stopped herself before saying that they had gone to Nicole Werner's hometown to speak to the mortician who'd buried her because of a suspicion that it might not be Nicole in that grave. Sh.e.l.ly knew that if she were Denise Graham's mother, she would have known instantly what that meant. She took a deep breath and said carefully, ”I believe you might be the only one who can inst.i.tute any further investigation. I'm not saying that it might even lead us to-”

”Finding Denise.” Ellen nodded. Her eyes looked somehow clearer tonight. Her feet were still bare, and that struck Sh.e.l.ly as the saddest thing of all. It was so cold out, and even in the house, where the thermostat must have been turned up to eighty degrees, the floors were cold. She tried to look away from the feet, but she couldn't. She thought of Death of a Salesman. w.i.l.l.y Loman. Attention must be paid.

The toenails were clipped neatly, but the toes looked gnarled, red-the toes of a woman who had, until recently, worn high heels every day of her life. Ellen Graham had been a woman who, proud of her long, slim legs, had probably worn knee-length skirts, too, and silk hose, just to go to the grocery store.

”As I told you,” Sh.e.l.ly said, looking from the sad feet to the face, so bright with hope, ”I worked at the Chamber Music Society at the university until recently. What I didn't exactly explain earlier today was that my work-study student this year was Josie Reilly-”

Ellen inhaled, as if willing herself not to scream at the sound of that name.

”Yes. I'm sorry I didn't tell you before, but it's complicated by so many things.”

Ellen nodded, but her jaw was working on her anger. G.o.d help Josie if she ever crossed this woman's path again, Sh.e.l.ly thought, not without some satisfaction. Eventually, she knew, she would have to tell Ellen the whole, sordid story, but it wouldn't help either of them now, and might end with Sh.e.l.ly thrown out the front door and into the snow, having accomplished nothing at all.

Instead, Sh.e.l.ly started by telling Ellen what Josie had told her about the coffin, about the Spring Event. The hyperventilation. The EMT kept on hand for emergencies.

Ellen listened without seeming to be breathing.

She had, of course, like so many other mothers, a.s.sumed that the Spring Event was a party, a dance, a princess ball. There would be decorations, and hors d'oeuvres, and pretty dresses, and maybe a bit too much champagne, ending in giggling, and dancing around the OTT house in stocking feet.

Even after all that had happened, Ellen had not yet begun to suspect that this image might be entirely wrong.

”Were you ever in a sorority, Ellen?” Sh.e.l.ly asked.

Ellen Graham shook her head. ”I didn't go to college,” she said. ”I married my husband right out of high school, and I worked as a secretary until he finished his MBA. And then I had Denise.”

Sh.e.l.ly nodded. ”Well, I was,” she said. ”It was over two decades ago, but some things are the same. Hazing, and-”

”Hazing is illegal,” Ellen said. ”We would never have allowed Denise to join a sorority if we thought-”

”I know,” Sh.e.l.ly said. ”But it happens. And being illegal has made it even more dangerous, even more secretive.” She went on to tell Ellen Graham, who held a hand to her mouth now as Sh.e.l.ly spoke, what she knew about the Pan-h.e.l.lenic Society and the pressures that could be put to bear by it on a university-a public university, the funding of which was dependent on the goodwill of the taxpayers, which its administrators understood so well.